Logistics, Wireless Sensor Networks, Applications, Modeling. - Logistics has experienced a long time of developments and improvements based on the advanced vehicle technologies, transportation systems, traffic network extension and logistics processes. In the last decades, the complexity has increased significantly and this has created complex logistics networks over multiple continents. Because of the close cooperation, these logistics networks are highly dependent on each other in sharing and processing the logistics information. Every customer has many suppliers and vice versa. The conventional centralized control continues but reaches some limitations such as the different distribution of suppliers, the complexity and flexibility of processing orders or the dynamics of the logistic objects. In order to overcome these disadvantages, the paradigm of autonomous logistics is proposed and promises a better technical solution for current logistics systems. In autonomous logistics, the decision making is shifted toward the logistic objects which are defined as material items (e.g., vehicles, containers) or immaterial items (e.g., customer orders) of a networked logistics system. These objects have the ability to interact with each other and make decisions according to their own objectives. In the technical aspect, with the rapid development of innovative sensor technology, namely Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), each element in the network can self-organize and interact with other elements for information transmission. The attachment of an electronic sensor element into a logistic object will create an autonomous environment in both the communication and the logistic domain. With this idea, the requirements of logistics can be fulfilled; for example, the monitoring data can be precise, comprehensive and timely. In addition, the goods flow management can be transferred to the information logistic object management, which is easier by the help of information ...
